Long-term memory remains intact even after brain injury: Study

Sydney, Feb 6 : A new study at University of California, San Diego School of Medicine has found that long-term memory remains intact even after a brain injury.

The study led by Larry R. Squire, a professor of psychiatry, neurosciences and psychology was conducted using a new interview method called the Autobiographic Interview.

The researchers asked five people with selective brain damage to recall events from their past out of which three patients had limited damage to the hippocampus, memory-processing centre and two had large medial temporal lobe lesions, a brain region.

They asked the participants to recall 50 or more details of one memory each of five periods in their lives: childhood, teen years, early adulthood, middle age and the year immediately before testing.

The results showed that the memory remote past remained intact as compared to recent past.

"Autobiographical recollection was impaired in patients with medial temporal damage when memories were drawn from the recent past, but fully intact when memories came from the remote past," Live Science quoted Squire, as saying.

The study appears in this week's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.